Middle East Uncovered uses pseudonyms to protect our sources in Afghanistan.
Somewhere in Kabul, Afghanistan, a Hazara woman visits her community mosque, where a curtain segregates the women from the men. She prays to the 12 imams, surrounded by women who, like her, seek answers, guidance, or a stroke of luck. Every so often, she stifles a giggle when prayers evolve into desperate wails. In the end, they embrace and affirm each other’s hopes, and these small moments remind her why people go to the mosque in the first place.
This may seem like an ordinary scenario in a Muslim country. But the woman, 22-year-old Begum, is an ex-Muslim and considered a murtad, or apostate, in her home country. In Afghanistan, leaving Islam carries profound social stigma and can also be punishable by death. “I’m not a Muslim. I don’t believe in it, and I don’t practice it.” She even jokes about how far she has moved from the faith, describing herself, with deliberate exaggeration, as more “Islamophobic” than anyone she knows. Given that religion has been invoked to justify many of the restrictions governing nearly every part of her life, her bitterness toward it is not difficult to understand.
Despite this, she attended the mosque with her mom on Tuesday, an acquiescence that greatly appeased her devout parents, out of desperation. She needs a miracle to leave Afghanistan and attend college, an opportunity the Taliban robbed her and millions of other girls and women of after its 2021 takeover. She’s leaning toward studying cybersecurity and AI abroad; originally, she planned to pursue a degree in biology, but years of waiting to leave Afghanistan forced her to reconsider. The sciences appeal to her logical mind, and over the years, studying them was what slowly chipped away at her Muslim identity.
In the first few months of 2025, after countless hours spent filling out college applications, drafting essays, and saving money from teaching online Persian lessons, Begum was accepted to universities in Michigan and North Carolina. “I felt unrealistic happiness. I was over the moon; it gave me some hope that I hadn’t had for a while, and I had incredible mental stamina. Nothing bothered me anymore—I was just happy because I had my ticket out.”
She recalls paying closer attention to everything around her during this time, an intentional exercise she felt was necessary to remember everything she would be leaving behind. This vivid embedding of the most mundane details of her life was how she would keep home with her once she left: the smell of her house, the taste of familiar food, even the ordinary sights and sounds she had barely noticed before.
The high started to falter as news that President Trump was considering a travel ban on Afghan nationals percolated across the internet. Bracing herself for bad news wasn’t a new skill she had to hone, but it was one she still dreaded. Inevitably, in late 2025, the ban was made official, and her world came to a screeching halt. She recalls feeling like a ball, as if she were confined to the smallest part of her body. When discussing this period of her life, she senses her emotions getting the best of her: “I can feel my nose is telling me I’m going to cry,” she says in a WhatsApp voice note and quickly ends the recording.
In the months after the U.S. travel ban took effect, Begum struggled to find motivation to do much of anything. The work she had put into getting out was reversed by an administration that would never know her potential or drive, nor would it ever care.
It was a blow to her hopes, yet eventually she restarted the process, this time applying to schools in countries like Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, Romania, Lebanon, and China. She was rejected by a school in Bangladesh: “They didn’t take me, oh my God,” she laughed sardonically.
For better or for worse, being confined to her home gave her time to navigate different countries’ college application processes and requirements, and in 2026 she was accepted into Qingdao University, one of seven Chinese schools she applied to (four of which she was accepted into). Yet getting into a school abroad is only half the battle: the hard part is getting out of Afghanistan.
Navigating the visa process is nightmarish, especially as an unmarried woman, because it essentially penalizes being single. To leave the country, Begum needs permission from the Taliban, a student and transit visa, and a visa for her mahram, the male relative required to accompany her. While no law technically forbids women from studying abroad, the mountain of near-impossible hurdles one must clear acts as its own deterrent.
Two common requirements for international students’ university applications are impossible for women to obtain in Afghanistan: a TOEFL score, which measures English-language proficiency, and a “stamped” high school diploma verifying graduation. Women can’t sit for the TOEFL exam, and the Taliban stopped stamping high school diplomas after the 2021 takeover.
According to UNESCO, roughly 90,000 women were enrolled in Afghan universities before the Taliban banned them from higher education entirely in 2022. Today, UNESCO estimates that nearly 2.4 million girls have been prevented from pursuing secondary education, a projection that Begum is, fortunately, not part of.
Begum describes the infuriating experience of having to go with her brother to request her non-criminal record, only to be treated like a criminal by the officer, who, unsurprisingly, addressed only her brother. War and humanitarian crises have further complicated the situation, and the agility with which Begum has navigated each new obstacle would exhaust most people.
She considered every country adjacent to Afghanistan at one point: Pakistan was the most common, but it was cracking down on Afghan travel; Uzbekistan would arguably be easier, but the visa cost is an exorbitant $3,000; Iran is both affordable and less complicated on paper—she could enter without a mahram if she presents her trip as a religious pilgrimage, but there are obvious risks involved with that option due to the war and Iran’s own instability; and she pursued Tajikistan, but to this day, both visa applications (one for her, one for her father) are still pending.
In her desperation, she has even entertained a “very, very, very, very last option”: bribing an airport official to let her fly, an approach she knows is illegal, dangerous, and could land her in prison.
For now, Begum is still waiting for her dad’s visa approval while quietly pursuing back-channel conversations about riskier ways out. She has no plans to return to the mosque, unless her mom’s insistence wears her down again. That Tuesday visit was a one-off Hail Mary, a last resort in a country where every possible way forward seems to lead to another dead end.
After years of navigating a system designed to stop her, Begum has learned that getting out may mean beating the Taliban at their own game: chipping away at the system one step at a time, searching for cracks in the barriers meant to keep her trapped until she finds one wide enough to make her escape.
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Are there any data already on the effects of these laws?